Globalist

Jews and Evangelicals Find Common Political Ground

By ROGER COHEN

Published: February 10, 2007

NEW YORK For the Reverend John Hagee of San Antonio, Texas, the basis for Christian evangelical support of Israel is spelled out in the third verse of Chapter 12 of Genesis. Here, God declares to Abraham: "I will bless them that bless thee and curse him that curses thee."

"It's right there in the Bible," Hagee says. "Anyone who makes the life of Jewish people difficult or grievous, as did the Pharaoh, as did Hitler, will be cursed by God. We have a biblical command to speak out in defense of Israel."

Hagee heads an organization called Christians United for Israel, founded last year. He notes a "groundswell of support" for Israel, driven by what he calls his "hammering on this subject" in national television shows, and that of other evangelical broadcasters.

The annihilation threats to Israel of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, have only spurred American evangelicals to do "what is right and scripturally commanded, because if you take away the Jewish contribution to Christianity, there would be no Christianity," he argues.

Hagee is planning a huge "march on Washington" in July - last year he brought together 3,600 people for the first such gathering - in which evangelicals from every state will meet with senators and members of Congress "to express strong support for Israel."

It is not easy to measure the precise significance of such evangelical support for Israel, but it is growing. White evangelicals account for about a quarter of the electorate and form a significant part of the Republican Party base, one to which President George W. Bush, himself a born-again Christian, is particularly sensitive.

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, the Israeli government's good-will ambassador to evangelicals and the founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, says that his organization now boasts more than 500,000 members and that last year Christians within it raised $75 million for Israel.

"Last year we grew by 43 percent," he says.

Eckstein notices a significant change in the attitude of many American Jews toward evangelicals. Where before differences on a range of social issues - gay marriage, abortion, the division of church and state - strained the two communities' relations, those tensions have now been overcome or set aside in the interests of unity on Israel.

"After 9/11 and the intifada and the Lebanon war and Iran, the American Jewish community has learned that these people are friendly to Israel and there's no quid pro quo," Eckstein says. "So the majority of Jews have bracketed the issues that are divisive because the survival of Israel is at stake."

This coming-together has had a couple of significant consequences. The first is that you don't have to be Bush to realize that the combination of Jewish and evangelical support constitutes a powerful political base that can be cemented by forthright and largely uncritical support of Israel.

A Democratic Congress has already proved vociferous on Iraq, but quiescent on Palestine and Israel.

The second is that the clear-and- present-danger view of Israel's current situation has been fortified, with the corollary that Israel has no choice but to act ruthlessly against its enemies. Hagee puts this case succinctly:

"There is no hope for peace between Israel and the Palestinians because Hamas and Hezbollah have covenants calling for the destruction of Israel. They are terrorists sworn to the death of Jews, so any attempt to make peace with them is a farce."

Palestinians have of course fortified this view among evangelicals and many Jews through suicide bombings, their divided response to the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, their continued propagation of annihilationist hatred in school textbooks and their ambivalence (at best) about Israel's very existence.

It is unclear, for now, whether the Saudi-brokered deal under which Hamas and the other main Palestinian faction, Fatah, have agreed to bury the hatchet and "respect" previous Palestinian agreements with Israel will coax any order, intelligent compromise or strategic focus from this Gaza mayhem.

What is clear is that a fundamental division of view over Israel's position will persist. The first is that a combination of Iran's nuclear ambitions, Hezbollah missiles, Hamas's power and global terrorism pose an existential threat to the country more acute than at any recent moment.

The second is that, on the contrary, Israel is the nuclear-armed regional superpower, lording it over the fenced-in Palestinians with an ease unthinkable even a decade ago, quite equal to any Iranian threat, exploiting the post 9/11 terrorist angst of America to its own ends and undermining its already eroded moral stature through colonization of the West Bank.

The recent gaffe of President Jacques Chirac of France suggests he tends toward the second view. There is little doubt Bush embraces the first. In general, Europeans are more offended by Israeli might than moved by Israel's plight. The reverse is true in the United States, where Hagee sees in Ahmadinejad "a threat to Israel and America."

But of course American Jews are not of one view. In fact, the intellectual climate among them is strained because some liberal Jews who are critical of Israel - and of what they see as a cynical alliance with evangelicals who only support Israel because they believe its existence is a prelude to the second coming - feel under attack.

"The atmosphere is hysterical, verging on McCarthyism," says Michael Lerner, a liberal rabbi from the San Francisco Bay Area. "You can't raise questions about Israel without being told you're an anti-Semite or self-hating and disloyal Jew."

Not so, says David Harris, the executive director of the American Jewish Committee. "I don't buy the idea that voices are being muzzled. Debate over Israeli policies is vigorous and never- ending."

That may be, although it's rarely visible in Washington. What is visible is the rise of absolutist views about Israel, shared by many American Jews and evangelicals, that will not make Condoleezza Rice's latest stab at peacemaking any easier.

"God," says Hagee, "is going to supernaturally protect the Jewish people." If that is so, who needs peace treaties?

Monday: Richard Bernstein on the amazing litigiousness of American society.

A version of this article appeared in print on February 10, 2007, in The International Herald Tribune with the headline: Globalist: Jews and evangelicals find common political ground.